And I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it. Because it was. $450,000 is a lot of goats. It’s a lot of well-fed kids and a lot of families that are happier and healthier than they were before.

But it made me realize that I needed *way* more help to run things effectively. We’ve come a long way since 2008 when Sarah and I ran this whole thing out of our living room.

As a result, this year I’ve got a bunch of lovely, capable, and above all *organized* people helping out. They say things to me like, “You know, maybe you should start asking authors for donations before the fundraiser actually starts…”

Its because of them that things are moving along smoothly and according to schedule. Hell, they’re the only reason there is a schedule.

So, with no further ado, a few updates:

Alchemystic Pre-Order

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog explaining my mortal enemy Anton Strout’s generous offer to donate $1 to worldbuilders for every copy of his upcoming book that people pre-order. I also mentioned that his publisher, Penguin, generously offered to match that donation up to the first 1500 books.

However, after I posted the blog, I realized that while I had gone into some detail about how much I wished to destroy Anton, I hadn’t done a good job of explaining how generous he was actually being with his offer.

(I will admit, this was not my best threat ever.)

You see, authors make their money by earning a royalty off each book they sell. For paperback books, that royalty tends to be between 6% and 8% of the cover price.

Alchemystic has a cover price of 7.99. Let’s call it eight bucks even just to keep the math easy.

This means every copy of Anton’s book that’s pre-ordered, will earn him between 48 and 64 cents.

That means for every copy of his book that’s pre-ordered, Anton is potentially giving away twice as much money as he’s making on the sale.

Now I’m not asking that you rush out and pre-order his book in an attempt to bankrupt this man. My nemesis. My sworn enemy.

No. That would be petty.

What I’m asking you to do is this:

1. Realize that if you order Alchemystic before Sunday the 23rd, it will count as a pre-order.

2. Consider that if you pre-order the book, two dollars will be donated to Worldbuilders, and, by extension, Heifer International.

3. Look at this adorable picture of a little girl hugging a goat.

4. Do whatever comes naturally.

The 2013 Literary Pin-Up Calendar.

So far the calendar pre-order has been going very well.

For example, these are the pre-orders we received just on the first day.

As we promised, calendars will go out in the same order that they came in. So these will be the very first calendars we ship out when they come back from the printer.

If you’re interested in seeing one of the recently revealed pin-ups, you can head over to the pre-order page on the Tinker’s Packs and check it out there. (Hint: It’s Peter S. Beagle’s.)

If you want to keep a close eye on the fundraiser and the store, following those pages might be a good idea. You’re less likely to miss updates that way. And some of the items we’ll be offering on the store, or putting up for auction in the fundraiser are going to be limited in number.

For example, last year someone donated 30 Jayne hats to the fundraiser and they sold out in less than a day. The same thing happened with the ceramic steins someone made for us.

If you tune in to the Facebook pages, odds are you’ll have a better chance of catching these sorts of things before they sell out.

That’s all for now, folks. More soon….

pat

[Edit: Added 1:00 PM]

Contact E-mails for Worldbuilders.

If you’d like to make a donation, you can drop us a line at donations (squiggly-at-thinger) worldbuilders.org

If you have a general question about the fundraiser, you can contact us at: Questions (squiggly-at-thinger) worldbuilders.org.

29 Comments

Awesome news about all the above. Just one little detail, I don’t know if it’s my computer, or if the link is actually missing, but where you say we can check out Moyers blog about the calendar, there’s nothing there.

I was wondering if there was a way i could just make a cash donation to world builders? I loved your Jayne hats so much that i made my missus make one for me instead of buying it off you. I’m feeling guilty for stealing your idea and $30 worth of goats from someone in need, so would like to make a paypal esq donation to clear my karma :)

My company offers a donation match for Heifer so I switched my payroll donation and specified Worldbuilders! I hope it gets credited to the Worldbuilder team correctly! Receipt!
Keep fighting the good fight friends!!

Wow, I guess after seeing that picture of the little girl and the goat, what came naturally for me was donating directly to Heifer International, haha. When I was entering my information though I wished there was a way to credit Worldbuilders; for some reason I didn’t think of donating directly through Worldbuilders – maybe that should be a more prominent option!

Pat said we’re about a month and a half away from the start of the fundraiser. Once it starts he will have links galore for people to click on so that they are donating to Heifer International through Worldbuilders. I think you just jumped the gun with your enthusiasm.

I was curious about that too so I went to the worldbuilders.org site which in turn you can click to the whole team thing at Heifer. It still gives you the opportunity to give to the worldbuilders team so I guess they’d still get the credit.
Granted since it’s off-season you don’t get the opportunity to win a book/screenplay/graphic novel/golden ticket/etc but as long as somebody gets a goat, that should be good enough.

Although it may seem contrary to wait and give a donation at a later date, consider this: Worldbuilders matches 50% the donations from (what I think) is Pat’s own larder / treasure chest / stuffed pillows… plus some sponsors. (To the tune of over $300,000.)

Of course… half of that was from last year alone, so maybe it won’t be a 50% match… we’ll have to wait and see.

According to a few minutes of shoddy research… It looks like last year’s fundraiser pushed us over the $1,000,000 mark in donations since 2008?

Looking forward to helping out with this years fundraising. How do you intend on announcing the new registration page for lottery, etc.? Will you post here and/or have another campaign tool to announce the new fundraiser?

It is in fact a horrendous threat. The prefix Dis- can be read as Un-. Troy was famously impenetrable until it was levelled by Agamemnon and his homies; Rothfuss is threatening to perform the equivalent of the Sack of Troy on Strout. As threats go, not one to be taken lightly.